The Hyperloop concept is already beginning to pick up speed. A new start up group of engineering experts, who call themselves Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc., has stepped forward with the ambitious task to turn Elon Musk’s idea into reality. Today the team’s leading technicians, Dr. Marco Villa, former SpaceX mission director, and former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers Dr. Patricia Galloway, along with HTT interim CEO Dirk Ahlborn announced their plan to build a prototype Hyperloop system by next year.

HTT revealed its plans to build up a team of 30 to 50 people with the help of JumpStartFund to work on the Hyperloop design in the coming months. The team presented a rough timetable for the system’s upcoming milestones, starting with a research paper offering specific technical details that will be released in March 2014. Just three months after that in June, a prototype design will be presented for construction bidding.

To help them in this accelerated endeavour, HTT is partnering with major engineering and manufacturing firms. Supply chain specialists at GloCa will provide manufacturing support, and UCLA’s SuprStudio architectural design program will contribute urban planning and design treatments.

This all seems to be happening very fast, and it has. Murmurings of an 700 mile-per-hour rapid transport system have been cropping up since 2012. In August, the Tesla Motors and Space X CEO Elon Musk unveiled the open-source plan for a solar-powered high-speed train that could transport passengers at speeds of up to 700 mph between Los Angeles and San Francisco. At the same time, this train would project a continuous jet stream of air to reduce air friction while being shot along an electromagnetic rail. It sounds far-fetched to say the least, but perhaps Hyperloop Transportation Technologies will show us otherwise.